


Living in Dreams; Dreaming About Life

by glitterburg



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Anxiety Disorder, Dreams and Nightmares, Hopeful Ending, Hospitals, M/M, Post-Canon, Sci-Fi Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 02:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15378369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterburg/pseuds/glitterburg
Summary: Yuuri's having nightmares. Luckily, like every dream, they always end when he wakes up—or do they? Well, that's something you'll have to figure out alongside Yuuri.





	Living in Dreams; Dreaming About Life

**Author's Note:**

> It's hard to say anything without spoiling the whole story, so I'll just give [Basia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedstill/pseuds/belovedyuuri) a huge kiss on the cheek for proofreading it. 
> 
> It's written partly as a zine app and partly for [@wewritevictuuri](https://wewritevictuuri.tumblr.com)'s Autotelēs week - Day 6: Fantasy/Sci-fi.

Yuuri’s breath catches in his throat and that’s what wakes him up. He’s surprised his muscles respond when he tries to move because terror froze every last drop of blood in his veins. He slowly scrambles closer to Viktor and presses his face to the back of his head.

It’s instant salvation to his racing heart. Finally, he inhales and welcomes the familiar vanilla scent of his fiancé’s shampoo. He strains his memories, but the nightmare slips away like how sand slips through fingers.

It’s okay. It wasn’t real.

Viktor turns around and wraps him up in his arms like he can read him even in his sleep. Yuuri fits his head underneath his jaw and focuses on breathing until he dozes off again.

 

 

Yuuri’s vision is blurry when he stirs. He can’t tell what time it is, but the sun must be high if Viktor closed the usually open drapes in front of the windows. He turns onto his stomach and burrows his face into the pillow, perfectly content to steal a few moments for himself. Something isn’t right though. He lifts his head and blinks around the room and confusion dawns on him, knocking the sleepiness out of his eyes straight away.

How did Viktor manage to change the bedding while Yuuri was sleeping? He knows the duvet was white when he snuggled closer to him last night, not navy blue. He usually sleeps like the dead, but he doubts even he'd be able to sleep through that. 

He doesn’t linger on the thought for too long though. The smell of coffee and bacon even through the closed door has Yuuri salivating, and it deems motivational enough to get up and find his glasses on the bedside table. He can’t have the bacon, of course, not with his current diet, but he promises he won’t complain too much in exchange for warm coffee.

“Good morning!” He can hear Viktor all the way from the kitchen as he shuffles across the hallway to the bathroom.

“Morning,” he mumbles in response as he disappears behind the door to brush his teeth.

Yuuri squints his eyes to inspect the immaculate tiles on the floor and walls and the limescale-free glass walls of the shower. Just how early did Viktor wake up to also have time to deep-clean the bathroom?

“Viktor,” he sighs resolutely as he enters the kitchen a few minutes later and sees his plate, “you know I can’t have that.”

“Why not?” Viktor asks. He looks genuinely confused which Yuuri would find adorable if there weren’t half a dozen pieces of juicy bacon piled on his plate with toasted bread.

“Because all the grease will transfer onto my stomach as soon as I swallow it?”

“Oh,” Viktor responds with the surprise of someone who thinks Yuuri doesn't make sense. “But you don’t need to worry about that.”

“I appreciate the effort though, thank you,” Yuuri continues, ignoring Viktor’s sweet answer. “Do you want them?” He grabs a fork and picks up all six pieces. Viktor can eat whatever he wants because he won at the genetic roulette at birth and never gains a single unwanted pound.

“No, I’m fine.”

Yuuri shrugs. He hates to waste food, so he piles the treat into Makkachin's bowl.

“Where’s Makka?” he asks. She usually follows them around the kitchen like a shadow, especially when they’re cooking something as fragrant as bacon. When he straightens up, he looks for the coffee he could smell all the way from the bedroom.

“You shouldn’t have given it your breakfast, your vessel will break down without a sufficient supply of meat,” Viktor says. ‘Vessel’ is a strange word to use, but English isn’t Viktor’s first language.

Yuuri doesn’t correct him, because Viktor walks around the dining table and hands him the mug he’s searching for. He just stands there next to him after that, looking at him with the sort of gaze he usually reserves for people who are _not Yuuri_. It’s hard to keep eye contact with him when he’s like this, so Yuuri squeezes his mug and puts a step between them.

“I’ll take Makka for a walk if you haven’t yet,” he offers just to say something.

“Well,” Viktor snorts behind him, “if you can catch that dog.”

The poodle is resting in front of the couch in the living-room, but instead of jumping to her feet and prancing over to Yuuri like she usually does, she stays on the floor with her narrowed eyes tracking him.

“Makka, what’s wrong?” Yuuri asks, crouching down in front of her. He reaches out to pet the dog's head but snatches his hand away when Makka pulls her lips back in a growl. “Hey,” Yuuri tries again—the poodle snaps her head up and barks.

The noise attracts Viktor’s attention. “Is it still moody?”

Yuuri doesn’t know who’s offending him more: Makka with the attitude or Viktor who looks like he doesn’t even care.

“Is everything alright?” he asks because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Personally, I’m perfect,” Viktor answers with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “But are you okay? You look like you’re having a difficult morning.”

“I don’t know…” Yuuri admits. "I guess I’m worried about Makka.”

“How about you go sleep a little more? It might do you some good.”

“But what about Makka?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

 

 

The uneasiness that settled in Yuuri’s stomach trying to figure out why the morning was so odd is still there when he stirs from his slumber. Familiar arms are wrapped around him—did Viktor get back in bed too? He cracks an eye open and he's instantly blinded by the sunlight pouring in through the windows. The white duvet feels crisp under his fingers.

He smiles.

It was just a dream.

“Good morning, love,” Viktor murmurs and Yuuri concentrates on the lips moving on the top of his head.

“I’ve been having the weirdest dreams,” he admits quietly.

“Oh.” Viktor runs his fingers through Yuuri’s hair once, twice, three times, and the muscles in his abdomen start to slowly relax. “How about we make some breakfast and you tell me all about them?"

Yuuri turns his face upwards to be able to look into his fiancé’s gorgeous, blue eyes and welcomes the sweet kiss when just looking isn’t enough anymore. By the time they get out of bed and shuffle into the kitchen, Yuuri forgets the details of the dream.

They divide their morning duties: Viktor prepares protein shakes, poaches a couple of eggs, and steams some baby spinach while Yuuri puts something together for the impatient Makkachin.

The rest of the day passes in a blur. Well-fed and prepared for a day of training, they jog all the way to the Sports Champions Club. They’re the first to arrive—not even Yakov is in sight yet—so they have the virgin ice all to themselves to do whatever they want. They carve the patterns of their pair skate program in it.

If the long, exhausting hours of training don’t drain Yuuri, jogging back home surely does; he collapses in bed right after getting out of the shower, skipping dinner and the movie he planned to watch with Viktor.

At least it’s going to be a dreamless night.

Hopefully.

 

 

Yuuri wakes to Viktor’s voice, his Russian clear and sharp and a little too loud in the otherwise quiet bedroom. He barely understands any of it, but going by the urgency he’s talking with, it must be important.

He lays still, content to just listen to his fiancé’s smooth, lovely voice. He doesn’t want to interrupt the conversation.

It doesn’t last long anyway.

“You woke up,” Viktor says after his phone lands on the duvet with a soft thud.

“Mmm.” Yuuri blindly reaches out and grabs Viktor’s hand, pulls him closer until he doesn’t have a choice but to lay with him. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?” Viktor asks. He pulls his hand away and sits back up.

Yuuri opens his eyes and his heart sinks with the sight of navy blue bedding and closed drapes. He doesn’t know where this sense of… what? Foreboding? Apprehension? Or whatever it is, is coming from. Is this an unexpected post-season anxiety episode unfolding slowly?

“You look distracted,” he says slowly, “come back and hug me?”

He sounds desperate, almost pleading, yet Viktor doesn’t comply. He stands up instead and walks out the door. Yuuri’s heart dives even further down. He gets out of bed and follows him out silently.

“Is something wrong?” he asks because obviously, something isn’t right.

It’s not the first time Viktor shuts Yuuri out like this; that’s just the way he is, it can’t be helped, and all Yuuri can do is make sure he remembers he’s available anytime he wants to talk about it.

“I’m fine.”

“Umm.” Okay. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll have a shower. We can start training after that.”

“Take your time.” Viktor doesn’t look at him while he says it. Instead, he makes sure the spines of the books on the shelves are lining up perfectly. “We won’t be training today.”

“What? Why not?”

“You need to rest. You’re not feeling well.”

Yuuri’s mouth falls open. He can’t be serious, can he? It’s Viktor who isn’t being himself.

He swallows his frustration. Takes a deep breath. He will give Viktor the space he needs, pop into the shower, and then maybe… maybe a miracle will happen and his life will be normal again by the time he gets out. Yuuri glances at him one last time; he’s sitting on the left side of the couch now and completely ignoring the growling and barking Makkachin on the right.

 “Makka, come here,” Yuuri says and hunches down, petting his knees. The poodle, instead of racing to him to put her paws on his legs, just keeps barking.

He backs away from both of them and locks himself in the bathroom.

This is just a dream. This is just a dream. This is just a dream. He repeats it like a mantra, tries to believe it, and wills himself to wake up.

Please wake up. Please wake up _._ “Please wake up,” he whines this last one aloud.

This is just a dream _._

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Oh my god.

“I can hear you breathing from the living room,” Viktor says.

Subtle as always, Yuuri thinks bitterly.

“Open the door.”

Viktor’s voice is a bit softer than before, but it doesn’t help Yuuri’s nerves. His heart jumps from the pit of his stomach all the way into his throat. He opens the door because he’s an adult who knows how to deal with this and because he realizes that he’ll have to face Viktor at one point anyway.

“I made you coffee,” Viktor offers. His voice is flatter than his gaze.

“Thank you.”

“How about you drink it in bed and try to rest?”

Before Yuuri can even muster an answer, Viktor leads him back to the bedroom.

 

 

He can feel warm, wet patches of fabric under his cheek when he wakes up. Has he been crying? Before he can ask himself why though, he remembers those blue eyes that felt sharper than icicles. A new wave of tears spills over his eyes.

Viktor left a note on his unoccupied pillow, and Yuuri adjusts his glasses to read it. He’s out for groceries with Makka, and Yuuri uses this unexpected surprise to let himself curl in on himself in privacy.

He tries to remember what this latest nightmare was about, but all he manages to grasp is a vague recollection of expressionless eyes following him wherever he went.

He gets up eventually and sees that the kitchen is way too organized for Viktor to have had breakfast. He’s already putting together a meal in his head when he opens the fridge and—right. Viktor’s out shopping probably because it’s empty. He reassigns himself to the coffee machine, selects one of the fancier capsules and makes himself a frothy cup of caramel latte.

Viktor returns with two large bags of food, including Yuuri’s favorite protein bars. He snatches one off the counter as they’re putting them away. He looks at Viktor with his heart-shaped smile, and fluffy hair, and gentle eyes, and tries to bury the image as deep into his memory as it goes. He never wants to forget it, not in his nightmares, not ever.

Viktor’s smile spreads when he notices him watching and he steps into Yuuri’s personal space, cupping his face in both of his hands. His eyebrows pull together in a frown.

“Why have you been crying, my love?”

“Will you hug me?” Yuuri’s voice is frailer than normally.

“Always.”

Yuuri closes his eyes and wills his body to relax in Viktor’s embrace, muscle by muscle. His legs aren’t able to hold his weight up when he’s languid enough, but instead of falling to the floor he falls down a bottomless hole.

 

 

It’s loud, so, so loud! Yuuri’s ears are ringing, his head is pounding, and his eyes feel like they’re ready to pop out.

Stop the noise, please stop the noise, stop it, stop it, STOP IT!

“We can’t. We’re in the ambulance.”

What? _What?_

He’s able to make out Viktor’s face hovering above him. There are other people around them, people in white suits, and white gloves, and white masks, and white caps, protecting them from head to toe so all Yuuri can see is their eyes.

It’s Viktor’s eyes that shock him the most though, that familiar yet so alien gaze that seems to be haunting him in his dreams.

“Viktor—”

 

 

Something tugs on Yuuri’s brain, something that's inside his skull, and it hurts so much even crying isn’t a relief. He barely registers the sound of sirens in the haze this experience leaves him in.

“Yuuri, my Yuuri!” It’s Viktor, he’s squeezing one of his hands with both of his and Yuuri forces himself to focus.

Viktor’s eyes are impossibly wide, and so, so scared. Doctors in their blue uniforms discuss something over a syringe and a bottle of liquid that Yuuri hopes is the painkiller.

“Yuuri, you’ll be fine, I promise.”

Viktor’s voice is trembling and Yuuri wants to tell him he loves him, but something yanks on his brain again and it hurts, hurts, _hurts_ —

 

 

Viktor speaks in rapid Russian while one of the white suits fixes some sort of device around Yuuri’s head. His breath hitches when he feels thick needles probing his temples. There’s that tug again and Yuuri’s screams, screams until—

 

 

He’s being rolled around quickly on a stretcher, passing lights that are hanging from the hospital ceiling.

“Viktor!” he screams, “Viktor, there’s something inside my head!”

Viktor's still holding his hand, even now when he's being prepared to enter the operating room—

 

 

Yuuri is in…

Hmm.

He walks closer to the enormous screen in the pitch-black room and observes what he can make out through the blurry image that reminds him of what the world looks like without glasses.

He’s lying in a hospital bed surrounded by technology that surely only exist in sci-fi movies. There’s Viktor, talking to one of the white suits a few feet from his bed. It takes them a couple of minutes until they realize he’s awake and then they move closer, involving him in the Russian conversation. Weirdly, he understands all of it.

“Mr. Eleven Thirty-Four?”

“Yes,” Yuuri replies, except it’s not Yuuri because Yuuri's locked in this dark room. Mr. Eleven Thirty-Four talks in Yuuri’s voice, looks with Yuuri’s eyes, and moves with Yuuri’s body.

“I’m glad to have you back,” Viktor says.

“I don’t seem to remember what happened.”

“Your vessel’s consciousness deems unexpectedly strong. According to Mr. Eleven Thirty-Five,” the white suit nods in Viktor’s direction, “it managed to regain control. We contained it with stronger binds this time, so it shouldn’t cause more complications during your lifetime on Earth.”

“I had human-like dreams with Mr. Eleven Thirty-Five,” Eleven Thirty-Four adds.

“Probably the host’s memories. The two of them used to share a life.”

Yuuri isn’t looking at the screen anymore. He isn’t looking at anything anymore with eyes squeezed tightly together.

Is this real? Or is this another nightmare? Which one is it?

Can he force himself to wake up one more time?

 

 

Yuuri watches Eleven Thirty-Four living the life he stole from him. Watches him connecting to a tiny piece of device to download knowledge straight into their head; watches him speak fluent Russian, watches him skate and never stumble or fall, watches him stuff their face with bacon every morning and never get fat, watches him see perfectly without glasses, and consoles himself by watching the person who looks like his Viktor.

Yuuri still cries, even though he can’t tell what he mourns anymore: losing Viktor or losing himself. Maybe losing both.

From time to time, Yuuri gets to be in control. It’s probably the same glitch in the system as before except now Yuuri knows better. Knows how not to expose his identity. He stops seeing the point of being in control; not only Viktor is gone but all of their friends too—Yakov, Yurio, even Makkachin are just empty shells of who they used to be.

He doesn’t know where Eleven Thirty-Four goes when Yuuri’s awake. Having his human-like dreams, probably. He stole too much from Yuuri to care genuinely.

He opens a book absentmindedly. It used to be Viktor’s favorite, a compilation of Russian folklore, but when Eleven Thirty-Five rearranged the bookcase to his own liking, he tossed it onto the bottom shelf.

Yuuri looks for Viktor’s favorite story. Isn’t he lucky that he understands Cyrillic now? To his surprise, what he finds stuck to the first page of the tale isn’t in Russian; it's a post-it note with Viktor's unmistakable handwriting:

_Are you still here?_

**Author's Note:**

> If you think you'd enjoy an epilogue, let me know with kudos or comments <3 I'm on [tumblr](http://glitterburg.tumblr.com) too if you'd like to share your thoughts over there :)


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